30 March 2010

So, on Thursday, freshly pissed off from reading OMG PUNISH THE FATTIES, THEY'RE KILLING AMERICA, I skimmed through the Maroon Weekly articles on my reader. Now, I hate the "Love Connection" section at MW; it is trite and, far too often, ridiculously sexist. The author clearly buys into stupid and just plain not true sexist stereotypes, and thus his advice is infuriating more often than not. It is also aggressively and irritatingly heteronormative.

He actually used a metaphor comparing women to "kitty cats" in this column, and suggests in the same one that women use their girlfriends as substitute boyfriends, and that's why they will ditch their women friends as soon as they snag a guy, because they fulfill the same function (and who wants a lady friend when they have MAN, which is really all any women want ever). BUT we have established that I am a masochist, and like to read things that irritate me, so. My excuse is that I can't be ignorant about the culture I'm in, right? But we all know I just like bitching, so let's get to it. Here was the column in question:

Dear LC,

I’ve been dating my boyfriend for almost two years and about three weeks ago he wanted to sit down to “have a talk” about something. He came over to my dorm, sat down, got red in the face and then admitted that he had cheated on me with not one but TWO girls in the past year. The worst part was finding out that one of the girls he hooked up with was one of my best friends. I couldn’t believe it. He told me that she knew he was going to tell me that night and that she didn’t expect to talk to me for a while (yeah, she got that right). I felt betrayed by the two closest people in my life. My head was spinning and I didn’t know which way was up. So I stood up and pointed to the door. I didn’t know what to say and I couldn’t form words even if I’d tried. He got up slowly he walked out.

The real sad part is that I still love him, or at least I think I do. And he keeps trying to apologize. He was even crying in a voicemail he left one night; and he’s never cried before, so I know he must feel horrible. I really wish I could be with him, but I just can’t bring myself to forgive him. It’s really strange. After what he did to me, my impulse is to go and make HIM feel better. What should I do? Is it possible to go back?

Upside-Down Girl

And the self-proclaimed love doctor's response:

Dear U-D Girl,

This guy not only ruined his relationship with you but also destroyed a relationship with your friend (although it’s ultimately your friend’s fault for lifting her skirt). [emphasis mine]

Holy shit did he just say that? Now, this best friend presumably knew that the boyfriend and her friend were in a monogamous relationship, so I can understand that she betrayed her relationship with her friend. Here's the thing: LC is ostensibly talking about their friendship here (not the failed relationship between UDG and her boyfriend), and fails to realize that the breach of trust was more important than the actual sex act. We have to remember, of course, that LC also thinks women only become friends because they need a substitute for the penis, so I shouldn't be surprised. What really pisses me off about this part, however, is that there is no other part placing responsibility the boyfriend. It's just this sentence, which clarifies that he's to blame, sort of, but that hussy. She really deserves shaming. And it's the emphasis on her, rather than the boyfriend, that bothers the shit out of me. The language LC uses ("lifting her skirt") makes clear the slut-shaming, sexist tradition that he's working within; in his mind, men can't help be horny all the time and it's women's jobs to be the moral gatekeepers when it comes to sex. So affairs are the result of women "lifting their skirts" rather than the result of two actors mutually engaging in sexual activity. The poor menz can't help it that they want sex all! the! time!, but women never want sex, so it's their job to keep sex within its proper places. This is not only fucking stupid (If women never wanted to have sex, no one would have heterosexual sex, because it's an activity that requires two willing participants.), but fucking sexist. Men are perfectly capable of being moral agents, and to suggest otherwise is not only an unfair burden on women, but really insulting to men. And even if LC is giving some of the blame to the boyfriend (I think he is), he is also focusing the majority of his disgust and blame on the best friend (only one of the women the boyfriend had sex with, I'd like to point out), because he blames women much more for having extra-marital or extra-relationship sex than men.

Anyway, back to the train wreck:

At this moment, I imagine you have trust issues, and let me tell you: you’re going to have them with your next boyfriend, too. Yes, I said your next boyfriend, because this guy is Texas toast.

Don't you love his folksy aphorism? They're how you know he's genuinely home-grown.

It’s amazing that people will take an apology–something that, under normal circumstances, only works when there is trust–after the bond of trust is already broken. It’s like trying to build a sandcastle in the water.

But here’s the real problem, and this is why you can never go back. Resentment never leaves once it’s triggered in your soul. There are some things you can forgive and forget. But resentment is on a different plane. It’s more permanent than a tattoo. You’ll always look at him and see him having really good sex with your best friend, even years down the road. It just doesn’t go away, no matter how hard you try. Even if you were to have a relapse of deep love for him and tried to have a relationship, the residue of trust and love would eventually diminish and the resentment would bubble up again. So I hope you locked that door when he walked out with his head hanging low. Bad doggie.

Remember, “the one” is the one that would never sleep with your best friend.

This is terrible advice, and I'll tell you why: LC thinks he knows best. Better than UDG, who is clearly considering re-starting this relationship, and he knows this because of all his 22-year-old wisdom. It's not the age that I'm trying to make fun of, but the supreme confidence that LC knows exactly how everyone deals with betrayal and resentment. He wouldn't know this even if he was 70, and that makes his confidence even more ridiculous. Guess what, LC, sometimes people (this includes women) are capable of making their own damn decisions! Even advice columnists can understand this, because more often than not, people writing in to advice columns are looking for a sounding board, not a bossy asshole shaking their finger at them for wanting to patch up a relationship. And this more likely true of this particular woman, since she just lost two important sounding boards: her boyfriend and her best friend. One of my favorite advice columns is Feministing's Ask Professor Foxy (warning: explicit), because when people ask her "What should I do?" her answer is to try and give them resources on how to make that decision on their own. It is almost NEVER a direct answer, because Foxy trusts people (again, including women!) to make the decisions that are right for them. What UDG needs to know is that if she does get back together with her boyfriend, she needs to be aware of what may happen. If she thinks she won't be able to handle the heartbreak of breaking up again, she should consider that. But, ultimately, it's her decision, and it should be based not on LC's stupid universal claims about whether people can and should forgive, but her own capacity for forgiveness, her own desires, and whether she trusts the repentance of the boyfriend. And she needs to worry as well about her support system; were that boyfriend and best friend really all she had? Because she's going to need a safe space to talk about her relationship with said boyfriend if she decides to get back together with him, a space that isn't the best friend (if she forgives her) or the boyfriend. She needs some lady-friends, frankly, and not so she can "date" them, but so they can offer her support and love in whatever decisions she makes, women who will trust her to make the best decisions for herself and who will be there for her if they don't turn out to be the best decisions.